Community Wastewater Management System

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (15:41): Today, I would like to speak about the Tea Tree Gully council's Community Wastewater Management System (CWMS). The CWMS is an archaic system of sewage collection whereby the solid components of wastewater are collected by a septic tank in the back or front yard of the property and the effluent is carried away by the council's ageing network of pipes before ultimately being disposed of into the SA Water system.

Apart from the fact that it is quite unusual for properties within metropolitan Adelaide to be on a septic system, the system is ageing. It is 60 years old in parts, with increasing problems such as blockages, which have increased by more than 100 per cent over four years. The system is becoming increasingly expensive for households, with the annual service charge increasing by hundreds of dollars over recent years, and set to increase by hundreds of dollars more over the coming years, with a further $75 increase in the service charge for the coming financial year confirmed just last week.

The vast majority of people on the CWMS pay significantly more than they would on SA Water sewerage. Over my time as a member of this place, I have met many members of the community with stories about their problems with this archaic system. Just last week, I spoke to a gentleman who has an old brick septic tank. He is concerned that it will need to be replaced soon. As it is at the back of his property with narrow access along the side of his house, he would need a crane to replace the tank. Given the tank is his property, this would cost him a fortune.

I have spoken to others who have had structures unknowingly built over septic tanks: in garages, under driveways, under steps and sometimes deep underground, obviously creating problems and costs when it is time to have the tank emptied, which occurs every four years.

The system is really made up of more than 70 separate systems scattered across suburbs such as Fairview Park, Banksia Park, Surrey Downs, Redwood Park, Tea Tree Gully, St Agnes, Modbury, Modbury North, Vista, Ridgehaven, Hope Valley and Highbury, but not all households in those suburbs are on it. In some cases, most of the suburb is, sometimes it is half and half, and sometimes even a single street or a small number of streets are on it, surrounded by properties connected to SA Water.

My community is then faced with the incredibly unfair situation that CWMS households are paying significantly more for a worse sewerage service than perhaps their neighbours or even the house across the road. But the crux of the problem has been a lack of proactive maintenance and planning for the system's future. Curiously, a number of councillors have only discovered this issue since the election of the Marshall Liberal government in March 2018, after almost complete silence while the former Labor government sat on their hands doing nothing for 16 years on this issue.

Perhaps there is now recognition from councillors that the Marshall Liberal government takes the concerns of my community seriously, unlike the former Labor government, which cut services and downgraded Modbury Hospital despite my community's concerns. Perhaps under the former Labor government some councillors were too scared to bring this issue up to their Labor bosses. Perhaps both are true. Or did they just not know there was a problem? But, in any case, it has been all talk with no results for the households that actually have to live with this system.

Too many people on council have been asleep at the wheel on this for far too long, and now it has reached beyond the point where I believe it is even within the ability of the council to fix the problem. For this reason, I believe that the only way to deliver a real solution for my community is for intervention from the state government, and I have been in conversations with the Minister for Environment and Water to that end.

This has gone on for far too long. My community deserves better than to have to live with an archaic system that is falling apart and costing households a fortune. They deserve more than bandaid solutions that only kick the problem further down the road. While others have been prepared to sweep this issue under the carpet and ignore the concerns of my community, I am not. I am listening to my community and working to deliver a real long-term solution. Let's fix this.